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I wonder if this could be turned into a legitimate way of supporting open source developers? Run their docker images that have an option to configure running a

by vonadz 5y ago

I wonder if this could be turned into a legitimate way of supporting open source developers? Run their docker images that have an option to configure running a miner during your down time.

artemonster 5y ago
Keyword here: consent! I cant imagine that someone would give any. So, no.
- vonadz 5y ago
  Obviously this would be consensual, keyword legitimate. I don't know why you can't imagine someone agreeing to support someone else with some CPU/GPU in off time.
  - Graffur 5y ago
    Seems like a good idea to me.
- gavinray 5y ago
  I would do this, why wouldn't you? If you aren't using your computer, who cares. Not like you'll notice. Tipping someone forces me to pay money I've already earned. I can't be assed to set up a crypto miner on my laptop and manage the wallet and all that, it's not worth the few bucks to me. But if it means making a livelihood to an open source developer, who collectively has hundreds of people doing this, yeah I would absolutely do that. It also lets me support a larger number of devs. I realistically don't want to pay out $5/mo to dozens of devs. (Currently sponsor 4) But if there's mining software that distributes profits against a pool of devs of my choosing, then sweet -- free money for them!
  - VRay 5y ago
    > If you aren't using your computer, who cares. Not like you'll notice. If you aren't using your computer, you aren't pissing away 500+ watts every hour either. On top of that, in most of the developed world, you get less money's worth of cryptocurrency out than the cost of the electricity to generate it. So if you really wanted to donate money, you'd donate more by just paying them directly than wasting power, money, and computer hardware life on generating cryptocurrency
    - vonadz 5y ago
      > On top of that, in most of the developed world, you get less money's worth of cryptocurrency out than the cost of the electricity to generate it. This isn't really true. It depends on your hardware. My friend has a 3080 and was making $30-$50 a day mining eth. 3080 has a max usage at 750W, and let's say your computer in total is at 1.5KW. Average rate in US is 13 cents/KWh. Don't think Europe is much higher than. Other countries probably less. Also life expectancy decline of mining is highly over exaggerated by GPU companies so people don't buy them second hand.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... In Germany it's 30 eurocents/kWh. That's a decent electricity bill.
  - lupire 5y ago
    All of that can be done better with a micropayments system without crypto.
falcolas 5y ago
As someone with an admittedly very minor open source presence, NO. I'd rather get tips than have someone waste electricity (not to mention hosting costs) on my behalf.
delusional 5y ago
Why would I spend CPU time doing useless work in order to give them strange coins that aren't money when i could just save the money and give it to them directly?
- paulcole 5y ago
  1. They might want strange coins and not money. 2. Most people won’t give them money directly. 3. It’s their choice how to monetize their project. It’s your choice to use or not use their project.
- awinter-py 5y ago
  I tend to agree with you, but there's an edge case-y argument here that idle CPU is a resource that a corporation might be happy to donate to a small developer in practice though I think it is not
  - delusional 5y ago
    An idle CPU consumes (relatively) little power. I get that you're "wasting" potential computation power, but we've spent years making auto-scaling CPUs to conserve electricity. On clouds, that CPU is probably even oversubscribed, so the idle time is already incorporated into the price. I don't even think it makes any sense in theory. In practice it's even worse. There's not a sane company in the world that would let some random bitcoin miner run on the same host as their mission critical system anyway.
- vonadz 5y ago
  Well firstly those strange coins are pretty much money at this point. They might not be as universal as fiat, but you can 100% live a comfortable life using only crypto, albeit it might be a bit more work. Secondly I think clicking "yes" to a message saying "you want to support the developer when your computer isn't doing work for you?" Is easier than sending fiat in most cases. I do concede though that it only really makes sense if you live somewhere with cheap eletricity.
  - 5y ago
Applejinx 5y ago
Am open source developer. Nope. Please for the love of God don't be sitting around thinking of how to 'help' me in this way…

by vonadz 5y ago

I wonder if this could be turned into a legitimate way of supporting open source developers? Run their docker images that have an option to configure running a miner during your down time.

artemonster 5y ago

Keyword here: consent! I cant imagine that someone would give any. So, no.

vonadz 5y ago
Obviously this would be consensual, keyword legitimate. I don't know why you can't imagine someone agreeing to support someone else with some CPU/GPU in off time.
- Graffur 5y ago
  Seems like a good idea to me.
gavinray 5y ago
I would do this, why wouldn't you? If you aren't using your computer, who cares. Not like you'll notice. Tipping someone forces me to pay money I've already earned. I can't be assed to set up a crypto miner on my laptop and manage the wallet and all that, it's not worth the few bucks to me. But if it means making a livelihood to an open source developer, who collectively has hundreds of people doing this, yeah I would absolutely do that. It also lets me support a larger number of devs. I realistically don't want to pay out $5/mo to dozens of devs. (Currently sponsor 4) But if there's mining software that distributes profits against a pool of devs of my choosing, then sweet -- free money for them!
- VRay 5y ago
  > If you aren't using your computer, who cares. Not like you'll notice. If you aren't using your computer, you aren't pissing away 500+ watts every hour either. On top of that, in most of the developed world, you get less money's worth of cryptocurrency out than the cost of the electricity to generate it. So if you really wanted to donate money, you'd donate more by just paying them directly than wasting power, money, and computer hardware life on generating cryptocurrency
  - vonadz 5y ago
    > On top of that, in most of the developed world, you get less money's worth of cryptocurrency out than the cost of the electricity to generate it. This isn't really true. It depends on your hardware. My friend has a 3080 and was making $30-$50 a day mining eth. 3080 has a max usage at 750W, and let's say your computer in total is at 1.5KW. Average rate in US is 13 cents/KWh. Don't think Europe is much higher than. Other countries probably less. Also life expectancy decline of mining is highly over exaggerated by GPU companies so people don't buy them second hand.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... In Germany it's 30 eurocents/kWh. That's a decent electricity bill.
- lupire 5y ago
  All of that can be done better with a micropayments system without crypto.

falcolas 5y ago

As someone with an admittedly very minor open source presence, NO. I'd rather get tips than have someone waste electricity (not to mention hosting costs) on my behalf.

delusional 5y ago

Why would I spend CPU time doing useless work in order to give them strange coins that aren't money when i could just save the money and give it to them directly?

paulcole 5y ago
1. They might want strange coins and not money. 2. Most people won’t give them money directly. 3. It’s their choice how to monetize their project. It’s your choice to use or not use their project.
awinter-py 5y ago
I tend to agree with you, but there's an edge case-y argument here that idle CPU is a resource that a corporation might be happy to donate to a small developer in practice though I think it is not
- delusional 5y ago
  An idle CPU consumes (relatively) little power. I get that you're "wasting" potential computation power, but we've spent years making auto-scaling CPUs to conserve electricity. On clouds, that CPU is probably even oversubscribed, so the idle time is already incorporated into the price. I don't even think it makes any sense in theory. In practice it's even worse. There's not a sane company in the world that would let some random bitcoin miner run on the same host as their mission critical system anyway.
vonadz 5y ago
Well firstly those strange coins are pretty much money at this point. They might not be as universal as fiat, but you can 100% live a comfortable life using only crypto, albeit it might be a bit more work. Secondly I think clicking "yes" to a message saying "you want to support the developer when your computer isn't doing work for you?" Is easier than sending fiat in most cases. I do concede though that it only really makes sense if you live somewhere with cheap eletricity.
- 5y ago

Applejinx 5y ago

Am open source developer. Nope. Please for the love of God don't be sitting around thinking of how to 'help' me in this way…